Pierluigi Paganini March 30, 2014

Experts at Lookout Mobile Security have discovered that cyber criminals are spreading Coinkrypt malware to use victim’s mobile to mine digital currencies.

Security experts at Lookout Mobile Security firm have discovered that cyber criminals are adopting Coinkrypt malware to use victim’s mobile phone to mine digital currencies.

In many cases we discussed of the raise for criminal activities that targeted Google Android users, we saw mobile Rat like Dendroid and spear phishing campaigns, like the one discovered by

FireEye experts, which were based on a common Winspy RAT that was adapted to hit Android devices.

Cyber criminals are orienting their profitable activities on the exploitation of mobile platforms adapting the principal monetization techniques.

Security experts at Lookout Mobile Security firm have made a worrying discovery, cyber criminals are using the victim’s mobile phone to mine digital currencies. The researchers have found various malicious Android applications deployed on the official Google Play Store which include with the Coinkrypt android malware. The malicious code is served by criminals to turn the victim’s handset into crypto currency miners.

The attackers used the Coinkrypt to recruit bot to compose a crypto currency mobile botnet, the specific malware is designed exclusively to mine Bitcoin and also less popular coins like Litecoin and Dogecoin.

“We recently saw several versions of this malware family we call CoinKrypt, which is designed to hijack your phone in order to use it to mine digital currency for somebody else.”